Paley, who has been ailing in recent years, often found himself awake at 3 a.m. watching CBS’s “Nightwatch.” The CBS founder thought a more elaborate version of the “Nightwatch” format might provide a solution to the network’s ratings problems. He asked the show’s anchor, Charlie Rose, to help plan a program to run at 8 p.m., five nights a week–the heart of prime time. Paley’s idea was a show that he called “What’s Happening,” where “things of beauty, things of taste” could be seen on TV. The plan, spelled out in a memo by CBS producer Jay Kernis, was to combine the strength of CBS reporting and interviewing, the reach of CNX and the depth of National Public Radio into a show that covered events, people, styles and the arts. Paley saw it “as somewhere between a landing at Inchon and a Hail Mary pass,” i.e., radical change for a troubled network, recalls Rose, who recently left CBS for Fox.
Like ABC’s Roone Arledge, who once hoped to make “Prime Time Live” a five-night-a-week show, Paley believes the new technologies of global coverage make profound changes in TV necessary. He has said privately that he regrets not merging with Ted Turner’s CNN when he had the chance. Instead he teamed with Laurence Tisch in 1986, in a deal Paley believed would return him to a position of influence over his creation. Not this time. Tisch’s broadcast president, Howard Stringer, quickly rejected Paley’s program. He said it would put CBS’s entire schedule at risk.
